In Rodman’s Ties to North Korea, Holy and Business Forces

Dennis Rodman, a former N.B.A. star, arrived Thursday at a hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, where he will help train basketball players.Credit
David Guttenfelder/Associated Press

The growing basketball collaboration between Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, can be traced back to an Irish online betting company and the pope.

Mr. Rodman, the former N.B.A. star who arrived in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on Thursday to tutor North Korea’s best basketball players at Mr. Kim’s behest, is doing so under the sponsorship of Paddy Power, Europe’s leading Internet gambling business. The four-day trip comes after a deadly purge by Mr. Kim that has raised worries of a dangerous power struggle in the nuclear-armed and often unpredictable country.

How Mr. Rodman and Paddy Power came to know each other is rooted in what gambling industry experts call the company’s culture of shrewd stunt marketing, offensive ads and the acceptance of wagers on almost anything, like the content of the final episode of “The Simpsons” or a president’s longevity in office.

The relationship began in February, when Paddy Power took note of Mr. Rodman’s highly publicized first visit to North Korea and his declaration of friendship with Mr. Kim — just as company officials were strategizing to maximize betting profits on the successor to Pope Benedict XVI.

They recruited Mr. Rodman to encourage betting on a black pope, riding him around Rome in an ersatz popemobile, as speculation intensified that the cardinals closeted in the Sistine Chapel might pick Peter Turkson of Ghana to be the Roman Catholic Church’s first African pope in modern times.

“We had a money-back special. Your money back if the pope’s black,” Rory Scott, a Paddy Power spokesman, said in a telephone interview. So when Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, a white cardinal now known as Francis, was chosen, Mr. Scott said jokingly, “Our prayers were answered.”

During their pope collaboration, Mr. Scott said, Mr. Rodman and Paddy Power executives devised the idea of setting up an international basketball tournament involving North Korea’s national team. Months later, when Mr. Rodman visited Mr. Kim a second time, the North Korean leader, an avowed basketball enthusiast, embraced the idea. He said they should hold the tournament in Pyongyang on his 31st birthday, Jan. 8.

“So it all started when the pope resigned,” Mr. Scott said, speaking from Beijing as he was preparing to accompany Mr. Rodman to Pyongyang. “That had everything to do with it.”

Mr. Rodman’s publicist, Darren Prince of Prince Marketing Group of Los Angeles, did not return telephone calls or emails seeking comment about the trip, which comes as Mr. Kim, who leads one of the world’s most isolated and repressive governments, appears to be engaged in crushing political challenges to his supremacy. Mr. Kim’s uncle and onetime mentor, Jang Song-thaek, was executed last week after an abruptly announced trial and conviction for sedition.

In an interview on Thursday in Pyongyang with The Associated Press, the only American news agency with a bureau there, Mr. Rodman reiterated that his plans had not changed and that the trip could ease the longstanding estrangement between the United States and North Korea, which never declared a formal end to the Korean War six decades ago. He said the trip was an opportunity for others to see “that this country is actually not as bad as people project it to be in the media.”

Mr. Rodman has said previously that after he conducts the training, he will return in January with an unspecified number of former N.B.A. players for Mr. Kim’s birthday tournament, which Paddy Power officials are calling “the Big Bang in Pyongyang.”

During Mr. Rodman’s first trip to North Korea, photos that quickly spread on the Internet showed him and Mr. Kim laughing together as they took in a basketball game. Mr. Rodman has proclaimed Mr. Kim “a friend for life” and “a very good guy.”

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Mr. Scott said Paddy Power was not taking wagers on the tournament, though he declined to discuss the commercial or financial aspects of the event. “We view this as a unique opportunity to put on a quite incredible historic event,” he said. “We view sport as a universal language.”

State Department officials have repeatedly said Mr. Rodman does not represent the United States government and is carrying no messages on its behalf. But privately, diplomats and North Korea specialists say, there is considerable interest in Washington about Mr. Rodman’s trip, partly because so little is known about Mr. Kim, the grandson of Kim Il-sung, North Korea’s revolutionary founder.

The trip and the Jan. 8 tournament also appear to have increased tourist interest in North Korea. Koryo Tours of Beijing, which specializes in trips to North Korea, even offered a deal on its website for a four-day excursion that included tickets to the tournament. “There will never be another trip quite like this one,” the offer states. “Anyone coming along with us will have a story to tell forever more.”

Despite the price of almost $8,900, quadruple the cost of a regular tour of that duration the package sold out within days, said Hannah Barraclough, a Koryo tourism manager. Ms. Barraclough said Americans had not been dissuaded by their government’s warnings that citizens should avoid travel to North Korea because they could be subject to arbitrary arrest.

Kenneth Bae, a 44-year-old American, has been incarcerated for more than a year on charges of hostile acts because of his Christian missionary work. Merrill E. Newman, an 85-year-old Korean War veteran from California who was seized on Oct. 26 while on an official tour, was not released for a month. Mr. Newman’s wartime role included advising anti-Communist guerrillas, a group particularly reviled in the North.

“It was awful what happened to him,” Ms. Barraclough said, referring to Mr. Newman, “but he went in not understanding that the Korean War was still going on. People were quite aware that it was an exceptional case.”

The publicity over Mr. Rodman’s visit could give Paddy Power some name-brand recognition as it is seeking to expand into the United States, where Internet gambling, considered a $33 billion market worldwide, is illegal in most states. The company has applied for licenses in Nevada and New Jersey, which along with Delaware began allowing Internet gambling this year.

The company is famous for offensive advertising and wagers on delicate political issues, some with racial overtones. In 2008 it was widely criticized for offering a bet that President Obama would not finish his first term, which critics said was an invitation for an assassination attempt — an accusation the company denied.

It has been repeatedly criticized in Britain over television advertisements deemed inappropriate. Last year, London’s Daily Telegraph listed Paddy Power’s most controversial ads, which include betting on the survival of two old women shown crossing a busy street, titled “Let’s make things more interesting,” and one showing Jesus and the apostles playing poker at the Last Supper.

Jocelyn Wood, a reporter and editor for Pokerfuse, a website about online poker news, said he would not be surprised if Paddy Power carried out “some form of ridiculous stunt” despite North Korea’s reputation for strictness.

“They may sign a nonaggression pact with Kim, or stage a leprechaun fight with the North Korean mascot, or something similar,” he said in an email. “Think like Borat — they’ll be doing something along those lines.”

Correction: December 24, 2013

An article on Friday about the relationship between Dennis Rodman, the former N.B.A. star, and Paddy Power, an Irish online betting company that recruited him to solicit bets that the successor to Pope Benedict XVI would be black, misstated a distinction that Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana would have held had he been chosen. Cardinal Turkson would have been the first African pope of modern times, not the first African pope ever.

A version of this article appears in print on December 20, 2013, on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: In Rodman’s Ties to North Korea, Holy and Business Forces. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe